Glass to Arson
by iwishihadapenny
Summary: Barry's just trying to survive his sophomore year without getting pummeled. Joe's just trying to keep his foster son out of trouble. And Len's just trying to stay out of jail. (A "what if Barry met Len when he was a teenager.")
1. Chapter 1

It was not Barry's day.

Who was he kidding?

It was not Barry's _life_.

The dull ache radiating from his eye was slowly transforming into a full-blown headache and the bustle of the police station did little to impede its progress. A couple of passing officers gave him a small nod of welcome, their eyes drifting to the side of his face where he was fairly certain a massive bruise was developing. Iris's pitying look as she dropped him off on her way to work didn't help.

Barry stuffed his hands into his pockets, kept his head down, and shuffled off in the direction of Joe's desk. It didn't take long – not nearly as long as Barry wanted it to take. He came to a stop in front of the desk, shifting his focus to the globe that the detective always kept there.

A deep sigh greeted him – the one that was becoming a more standard response lately. The one that said "Why are we here again?" or maybe "Why must my foster son be so difficult?" Or maybe it was the all-encompassing, "How is this my life?" It seemed more like the latter today as Joe said, "Bear, this is the second time this week."

"It wasn't my fault this time," Barry sulked.

"The principal said you got in a fight."

"More like the fight came to me."

"Most fights don't come unsolicited."

"Are you saying I asked for it?" That got Barry's gaze up to meet Joe's and his jaw ticked out in mulish anger.

Joe looked wearier than he anticipated and he almost felt sorry for being obdurate, but the lingering anger from the fight still thrummed in his veins and he wasn't ready to play nice yet. "That's not what I said, Bear. What happened?"

Barry scraped the bottom of his shoe along the ground. No good would come of this conversation and he really didn't want to have another fight on his hands. Maybe a half-truth would work this time. "You know, the usual: I'm a nerd, I'm gangly, I make good grades - take your pick."

Joe took a steadying breath, rubbing a hand across his forehead. "So it had nothing to do with the fact that someone scrawled 'Son of a Murderer' across your locker?"

Barry's hands clenched into fists inside his jacket. Even hearing the words set his teeth on edge. And it didn't help that Joe's tone held that same unbelieving note in it. Best not to go down _that_ path. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Maybe try _not_ to retaliate by punching the responsible party?"

His knuckles still ached from that attempt. "It didn't do much good."

"That's not the point, Barry!" Uh-oh, already dropping off the nickname to the real name. If he made it all the way to _Bartholomew_ , he was in big trouble. "You can't keep doing this – if you keep getting into fights, you'll be spending more time _out_ of school than _in_ it and then you'll have to repeat sophomore year. I know this is hard for you –"

"Do you?" Barry finally interrupted, unable to keep quiet any longer. "Do you really? Or do you just think it's hard that I'm bullied, but not because you disagree with what the bullies are saying about me?"

Joe leaned back in his chair, casting a quick eye around the area. Several police officers tried to look very hard like they weren't listening in on every word they spoke. "Let's not have this conversation here, Bear."

Back to the nickname again. Trying to placate.

"Let's not have this conversation _ever_ , you mean." Perhaps it was childish of him, but he was tired. Tired of being bullied. Tired of visiting his father behind bars only twice a week. Tired of not being believed. And tired of being afraid that one day...the mysterious red and yellow lightning might come for _him_.

" _Barry_ –" Joe's tone turned sharp.

"West!" Captain Singh suddenly barked from his office.

Barry almost smirked. Saved from another lecture by the boss.

Joe stood up and pointed a finger at him. "Don't think you're getting out of this. You and I are going to have a long talk when we get home. Just…go wait out in the lobby for me, ok? And get someone to get you some ice for your face."

"Fine." Barry shuffled away from the desk again. Nothing quite like avoiding a lecture for the moment in order to get the full-blown one later on. It was shaping up to be a _fantastic_ end to a _fantastic_ day. As he entered the lobby, he saw Detective Chyre coming towards him, carrying a bundled up towel.

"Hey, Barry, saw you come in with that sorry-looking face of yours. Came prepared." Joe's partner handed him the towel – which turned out to be wrapped around a bag of ice.

He gave a smile, even though the movement made him wince, and accepted the package. "Thanks, detective."

"Don't let 'em get you down. You're smarter than the whole lot of jocks down at that circus you call a school."

Barry shrugged self-deprecatingly. "If you say so."

"I do say so and you'd do well to pay attention to me. If you'll excuse me though, I have to get ready to process a high-profile thief being brought in. Stay out of trouble, okay? You're making Joe go grey before his time."

Barry only managed a half-hearted smirk, but the man didn't seem to notice as he hurried towards Captain Singh's office. With no other recourse but to wait for Joe to take him home and give him the longest lecture of his life, Barry wandered over to the chairs in the lobby to sit and wait, holding the pack of ice to his eye.

The police station seemed unusually busy today. People bustled in and out of the big glass doors, creating a constant breeze that washed over Barry as he sat a few yards from the entrance. A few petty criminals walked by in handcuffs, heading for the processing area, but none of them seemed particularly interesting.

The station was suddenly filled with the sound of an irate woman, who came charging in after a policeman. Her long blonde hair fluttered angrily about her shoulders as she dogged Officer Jenkin's heels. "You come back, officer! What are you going to do about my car?"

"M'am, I assure you, we have done all we can do." He stopped to address her, keeping his tone calm, but there was an underlying note of frustration in it, as if they had been having this conversation for a while now. "Unless you can find a description of the car that scraped yours, we can't do anything. I assure you, we'll talk to the shop owners in the area and see if we can get any witnesses. However, I'd advise you to talk to your insurance company about the matter."

They had stopped in the middle of the lobby, their argument causing a jam in the flow of foot traffic. The woman's pitch went higher, "A _scrape_? You think it's just a scrape?! It _dented_ my _car_! And I don't want to talk to my insurance – they'll just jack up their prices! The idiot who hit my car should be the one to pay for it, which is why you need to _do your job_ and _find them_!"

Other officers were coming around to help, which caused more of a cluster in the lobby. An officer leading a man in through the door moved to the side to avoid getting stepped on, causing the suspect he had a grip on to bump into Barry's legs.

Barry startled, dropping his towel of ice.

"Oh, sorry Barry, didn't see you there," the officer apologized. "Crowded today, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Barry agreed, his eyes snapping up to the officer and the man he was leading.

Cool blue eyes met his and a slow, self-assured smirk spread across the face of the suspect.

The teen shuddered. He didn't know what the guy was thinking, but he seemed _way_ too confident for a guy about to be incarcerated. His gaze dropped down to the man's hands, which were….no longer handcuffed.

His eyes widened. "Hey -!"

The man jabbed his elbow into the officer's face, sending him sprawling into the crowd, but not before the criminal had seized his gun. Barry made an attempt to get away from them, but he tripped over the ice he had dropped earlier. The only thing that stopped him from falling was a strong grip around his upper arm that yanked him back.

Barry felt no relief, however, because the next moment, the cool barrel of the officer's gun came to rest against his temple.

"Sorry, kid," the man drawled in his ear. "You're my ticket out of here."

This _really_ wasn't Barry's day.


	2. Chapter 2

This was not Len's day.

Who was he kidding?

This was not Len's _life_.

He exchanged exasperated looks with Mick and Lisa as the alarms started to blare around them.

"Those _idiots_. They are supposed to be keeping _watch_ , not doing anything that would trigger an alarm!" Lisa hissed.

"Well, that's what happens when you don't follow directions." Len tossed his bag of sapphires to Mick, who caught it without looking. "We need to clear out, _now_. The police response time to this area is unusually fast."

"Of course it is," Mick scoffed as they scrambled for the exit. "Only you would take that risk while working with an entirely new team."

"I thought anyone would be smart enough to _not touch anything_ when I gave explicit orders for them not to do so," Len directed this last bit to the decidedly nervous-looking group of three who were waiting for them near the front of the museum.

One of them shifted, fiddling with his gun, "Well, I thought –"

"We didn't pay you to _think_. And stop playing with your weapon before you accidentally shoot someone." Len shoved them towards the side exit. "Let's move!"

A blare of sirens directly out front made them stop in their tracks.

Len cursed. "Get these morons out of here; go with plan B."

"Lenny," Lisa protested, her eyes worried.

"Don't argue. I'll be fine, _go_!"

They scrambled away just as Len heard the first officers come through the front door. He casually strolled over to one of the paintings in the lobby and pretended to examine it as he waited for them to come to him.

"You there!" The first eager officer to spot him shouted. "Freeze!"

Len rolled his eyes. He wasn't even moving to begin with.

"Hands where I can see them!"

He put his hands up, turning around to face them with a smile. "Evening, officers, what brings you out so late?"

The officer didn't respond, keeping his gun trained on him while he motioned his comrades forward. They rushed to him, tearing at his jacket and patting down his waist and legs.

"Easy now, no need to get rough. I was just admiring the general splendor."

One of the officers searching him, who now pulled out handcuffs, snorted. "If that were true, you would come during the day when the museum was open."

"What can I say? I don't like crowds."

"Really, Snart, I'm disappointed in you. I thought you had more finesse than this."

Len shrugged as much as he could while the officer handcuffed his wrists behind him. "Sorry, I can't please all of my fans."

"I'm hardly a fan. But I must say your arrest will look good on my record."

"Always happy to help," he smirked.

"Yeah well, we'll see how chatty you are when we get to the station. In fact, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and –"

Len drowned out the rest of his Miranda rights as he allowed himself to be led outside and to the waiting car. As he was helped into the backseat, he caught a glimpse of Lisa slipping into a nearby car and screeching away ahead of them.

Well, hopefully plan B would go better than plan A.

* * *

His hopes for plan B rose as he saw the crowd coming in and out of the police station. Crowds were always a benefit in making a good escape. As the officer who had arrested him parked, Len saw Lisa storming up the sidewalk, hot on the heels of another policeman, ranting her head off. Another glance around assured him that Mick was parked as close to the station as he dared, the engine running.

Excellent.

The officer came around to his side of the car and opened the door. "Come on, Snart."

"Not going to help me out of the car? You were such a gentleman earlier helping me get in."

"Just get out."

"I guess chivalry really _is_ dead," he mourned as he did a little shuffle out of the car. Handcuffs made everything awkward.

As soon as he got his feet planted outside, the officer grabbed his arm and jerked him away from the car, slamming the door behind him. Without another word, they started up the steps to the station.

Len was already working on his handcuffs, judging the grip the officer had on him and keeping an eye out for any other officers who gave off a rookie vibe. It was all about getting the right hostage. Cops made notoriously difficult hostages, but if he could just get one that was a little green…

The doors to the station opened with difficulty due to the crowd gathered inside. He could hear Lisa's rant reach a pitch that made _his_ ears hurt. A sudden bustle in front of them made the officer who held him step to the side, causing Len to bump into someone sitting there. He glanced down to see who it was.

A kid, who fumbled with something before dropping it on the ground, sat there. Len felt his luck begin to change.

"Sorry, Barry, didn't see you there," Len's escort commented. "Crowded today, isn't it?"

The kid's eyes jerked up to meet Len's, wide and startled. One was looking decidedly more swollen than the other. Either the kid was a CI, a homeless teen, or…something else, but the familiarity with which the officer greeted him assured a favorable impression of the kid by the CCPD. Whatever else he was, he was exactly what Len needed.

He felt his handcuffs give at the exact second the kid's eyes dropped down to them.

"Hey!" the teen squeaked.

Time to move.

Len grabbed his escort's gun out of the holster at the same time as he sent a sharp elbow into the man's face. The officer went down, attracting the attention of a few people, but most were still focused on Lisa and the drama she was creating.

The kid was scrambling, but his gangly limbs got all tangled up in one another and he started to fall. Len grabbed his arm and jerked him back against his chest, putting the barrel of his newly acquired weapon against the teen's temple. "Sorry, kid, you're my ticket out of here."

He started propelling them backwards as the officer he had shoved hurried to get to his feet. Other people were starting to notice the problem, letting out cries of alarm, but they were mixing with the general chaos around Lisa and no one was fast enough to keep them from backing right out of the station.

"L-Look," the kid started, voice shaking, "I –"

"Shut up." Len tightened his grip on him as he maneuvered them down the stairs outside. This was the trickier part: officers who weren't as distracted as those inside were still coming into the station and they noticed the problem, several of them drawing their weapons.

He had just reached the bottom of the stairs as an engine revved and tires screeched up nearly onto the sidewalk, sending people running for cover.

Good ol' Mick.

The doors to the van were flung open by the goons who had made him get caught in the first place. He tossed the kid at them before leaping in after. It was an effort to keep his balance as Mick actually _did_ drive up onto the sidewalk while Lisa came flying down the stairs.

Len stuck his hand out for her and she grabbed onto it, allowing him to swing her into the van. They slammed the doors shut and Mick gunned it, sending them all flying to the floor.

He recovered more swiftly than the others, stepping over the general tangle of limbs to come talk to Mick at the front. "We got two vehicles waiting for us at Hatch and Custer. Take us there. You and I will take the kid with us. Lisa will make sure the idiots get to our safe house."

"Oh, will I?" She huffed as she got herself into a seated position. "Why do I have to go with them?"

"Because CCPD is going to be looking for him," he jerked a thumb towards the teen, who was scrambling to get as far away from them as he possibly could with such limited space. "And I'd rather not bring that heat down on you."

"Fine," she snorted. He could tell she meant anything but _fine_ and that they would probably be having a long discussion about this later. But she recognized that now was not the time or the place, so he knew she would do as she was told.

He crouched down in front of the kid, pulling out the handcuffs he had recently escaped from.

Frightened green-gray eyes stared back at him.

Damn it. The kid was younger than he expected.

Ah well. Beggars can't be choosers. He snatched up one thin wrist, even though the teen was wriggling like a fish on a hook, and snapped one cuff on him. It took some manhandling – the boy was all limbs, wasn't he? – to get him turned around so that he could handcuff the other hand behind him.

"Listen," the teen finally spoke, his voice a little stronger than it had been before. "I'm not that valuable to the CCPD and I promise I won't tell them anything…..I don't even _know_ anything!...just…let me go, ok?...Please?"

A valiant, but wasted effort. Len shoved him back against the wall of the van and smirked. "Just keep calm and we won't have any problems at all."

The sirens were fading behind him and he felt his spirits lift.

Perhaps this was Len's day after all.


End file.
